Reflections, commentaries, critiques and ideas from 40 years experience in the fields of Community Development, Community Education and Social Justice. Useful tools and techniques that I have learnt also added occassionally.

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The name of this blog, Rainbow Juice, is intentional.The rainbow signifies unity from diversity. It is holistic. The arch suggests the idea of looking at the over-arching concepts: the big picture. To create a rainbow requires air, fire (the sun) and water (raindrops) and us to see it from the earth.Juice suggests an extract; hence rainbow juice is extracting the elements from the rainbow, translating them and making them accessible to us. Juice also refreshes us and here it symbolises our nutritional quest for understanding, compassion and enlightenment.

Wednesday, 9 November 2016

Feminism Had To Happen

Mary Wollstonecraft

Feminism had to happen. It had to happen for women primarily. But, it also
had to happen for men, for children, for animals. It even had to happen for the
planet. It still has to happen. To take just one example. The World Economic
Forum recently published an estimate that it would be another 170 years before
women gained pay equality with men on a global scale. One – hundred – and –
seventy – years!!

Feminism had to happen for men. That is because feminism didn’t
point the finger at men as a gender, it pointed the finger at a system called
patriarchy. Patriarchy, coming from Greek roots, means “rule of
the father.” The term patriarchy has been broadened to recognise that the
rule of the father extends beyond the family to the state, to industrial and
economic society, and into our cultural arena.During the 1960s and
70s numerous books were published seeking to unpick how this system operated,
who it benefitted, and who it oppressed.

Firstly, women rightly claimed, patriarchy oppressed women and benefitted
men. However, the system also oppressed - or at least marginalised - young men,
gay men, men of colour, pacifist men, children, and nature. Those who mainly
benefit from the system of patriarchy are primarily older, rich, white men. I
know that this is stating a huge thesis in fairly blunt and simplistic terms. I
don’t have room for a thorough feminist-patriarchal analysis. But, that is the
basic mechanism of patriarchy. Consider just three examples.

Take a walk amongst war graves. Read the epitaphs and inevitably you will
notice that the ages of these men are not old, They are teenagers, or young men
in their twenties, possibly into their thirties. Who sends these young men
off to war? Older men. Men of power and prestige. Men with titles such as
General, Brigadier, Field Marshall, or perhaps others with titles such as Prime
Minister, President, Minister of Defence. Inevitably, they are older men with
authority. Those young men lying in war graves are the victims of
patriarchy.

The slave trade was abolished within the US and Great Britain only fairly
recently in human history. Who did that trade benefit? The cotton plantation
owners in the Americas and the owners of shipping companies. Who did it
oppress? Men of dark skins from Africa – a continent considered to be backward
by men of power and prestige in Europe. Patriarchy oppressed those slaves.

I grew up in a society that said, often very clearly, that “boys don’t cry,”
“put a brave face on it and face it like a man,” “don’t show your emotions.” I
was given cars, aeroplanes, trucks to play with. When I played with stuffed
toys I was looked at askance. Boys don’t play with dolls – and stuffed toys are
only one step away from dolls. Possible careers for young men then did not
include nursing and other caring professions – they were “for girls.” In short,
I was brought up in a culture where I was not supposed to explore my entire
human identity. Many emotions were off limits to me. I was denied my fullness
by patriarchy.

Patriarchy has always been oppressive. Feminism, rightly, pointed this out.
Feminism had to happen.

Feminism still has to happen. Today (2016) in the country in which I
presently live (Australia) the average full-time wage for a woman is only 82
cents for every dollar earned by men. In other words, a man could take the
final 9 or 10 weeks of the year off on an unpaid holiday, and still
earn the same as a woman who worked every one of the 52 weeks in the year. The
average superannuation payouts for women are less than 60% that of men in
Australia. Women make up less than one-in-five of the directors on the boards of
the 200 largest companies in Australia.

Perhaps the most damning statistic is
that domestic and family violence is the leading preventable cause of death,
disability, and illness amongst women aged 15 to 44 years.

Women, particularly feminist women, have been pointing all this out for years
- it’s not new. A Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary
Wollstonecraft was published well over three hundred years ago. Women have been
telling men to listen all that time. Women didn’t suddenly decide to become
vociferous in the 1960s or 70s. Fortunately, some men have listened, but many
haven’t. Some men, notably those belonging to the ill-named Men's Rights
Movement, have rejected the basic tenets of feminism and so have come up with an
analysis that totally misses the mark.

Where feminism pointed the finger at patriarchy, the men’s rights movement
has mistakenly pointed the finger at feminism. (See diagram below) This is a
big mistake. Feminism could be a useful tool of analysis for men, but only if
men are willing to look.

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About Me

I have almost 40 years experience working (paid and unpaid, government and non-government) in community development/education and social justice fields. I have continued to keep myself abreast of philosophies and theories in these and related fields. This blogsite will offer ideas, thoughts, reflections on these fields as well as giving some tools and techniques. I don't pretend that these will be original but I do hope that they will be able to translate some of these diverse ideas into coherent forms accessible to workers in the areas.